Rhino's latest Nuggets a Los Angeles exclusive

Rhino Records has done it again. The box set and re-release master cylinder recording label released today Various Artists Where The Action Is! 1965-1968. This four disc set compliments previous Nuggets box sets with even more seminal psych rock 45 rpm gold, this time an exclusive collection of Los Angeles bands.

Keeping in mind that most people move to Los Angeles rather than grow up there, Pitchfork Media staff writer Stephen M. Deusner paints the same picture in his review of the package:

But there's an even larger narrative traced by these discs, which show how the sounds that developed in clubs and bars were adopted by more ambitious and at times already established artists.

Hmm. A collection of songs from a seminal period in the history of Los Angeles music, and these groups claim the name "pioneer" only from their pre-existing status? Sounds a lot like Hollywood to me.

The fun part of listening to Rhino's "Nuggets" collections is finding the lesser-known track from a huge artist squeezed between the completely unknown. Former teen idol Rick Nelson sitting to Captain Beefheart on the tracklist shows the inclusive zoo of an atmosphere that was Los Angeles in the late 1960s or maybe the dissonance of a town in which everybody who's anybody stakes their claim.

Rhino did their homework,as always, and provides a collection of songs with a narrative that illustrates how themes of riots and discourse in songs such as Bufflao Springfield's "For What It's Worth" can sit beside the beauty of a Byrds song in a place and time all its own.